NewSourceofPower.pdf

LEADERSHIP • POWER

New Sources of Power
W e n e e d a n e w m o d e l o f l e a d e r s h i p .

by Sally Helgesen

VER THE LAST 15
years, three forces

have transformed the
nature of organizations, rendering tra-
ditional models of leadership obsolete.
By examining these forces, we can bet-
ter see what leadership we need.

First, the nature of our economy has
shifted. In this knowledge era, primary
value is vested in the knowledge and
expertise of those who comprise and
serve if. Human knowledge—not land,
capital, or machines—has become the
essential asset, shifting the balance of
power azvay from organizations and
toward individuals.

The shift to a knowledge economy
has three implications for leaders:

3. Individuals noiv own tbe primary
means of all production. The knowledge
economy offers more freedom, choices,
and scope for acfion to those whose
skills and talents have real value. In a
knowledge economy, talent can’t be
compelled, but must be encouraged
and coaxed. Leaders must attract and
inspire people to use their best talents.

2. Knowledge must be broadly z>ested.
In the industrial world, knowledge was
often prized only at the top of the pyra-
mid or chain of command. Dedsioas
were made by “heads” at the top;
implementation was done by “hands”
in the ranks. By contrast, in a knowl-
edge economy, knowledge musf be
distributed broadly fo be effectively
leveraged. Leaders must build colle-
giality and spread decision-making.

3. Since a great idea has greater worth
than costly machines or even access to cap-
ital, competition can come from anyiohere.
A 100-year investment can be trumped
overnight by a smarter vision of how
to offer a product or perform a service.
This puts a premium on innovation,
continually adapt to changing condi-
tions. Since new ideas are paramount,
leaders must be skilled in creating a
culture in which innovation flourishes.

Second, a new architecture of tech-
nology is reshaping organizations.
Today’s networked systems are fast,
flexible, interactive, and non-hierarchi-
cal in shape and structure, facilitating
direct communication. Those who are
comfortable communicating directly.

M a y 2 0 0 8

rather than up and down a chain of
command, have a distinct advantage.

This has two primary implications:
First, technology distributes informa-

tion more broadly. Information and power
are being pushed down to those on fhe
front lines, no longer isolated at the top.
This undermines hierarchies and the
status of those at the top, as they rely
primarily upon fhe mystique of their
position. Leadership is becoming de-
coupled from fhe power of position; if
must be constantly earned, not assumed.

Second, using the technologies of work
to manage private lives breaks down barriers
betioeen public and private, work and home.
As technology becomes ubiquitous,
zones of privacy erode. Public and pri-
vate concerns can no longer be separat-
ed. Private issues are resolved in public;
privafe behaviors fhaf were in the past
tolerated have become fhe subject of

public debate; public and political mat-
ters are increasingly viewed as matters
of privafe concern; and private and work-
ing hours encroach upon each other.

Leaders must negotiate the frontier
between public and privafe, aligning
their private actions wifh their public
face and respecting privacy that their
stakeholders value. Failure to do so
brings rapid and severe public
response, even for fhose whose position
made them unassailable in the past.

The third change is demographic. This
is manifest in fhe inclusion of women
info positions of aufhority and influ-
ence. Women bring witb them many of
fhe talents, atfifudes, and presump-
tions that were formerly honored in fhe
domestic sphere info the public realm.
This has had a profound impact upon
whaf is required of leaders. Relation-
ship skills, intuifiveness, inclusiveness,
coaching, fhe capacity fo listen—these
were considered “soft” skills, antitheti-
cal fo heroic conceptions of charge-

ahead leadership. Recently, these skills
have moved front and center.

Women tend fo evince a healfhy
skepticism about the perks and privi-
leges that define high position, in part
because they have long been excluded
from traditional hierarchies. But this
skepticism is also the result of fhe fact
thaf women, as the Harvard psycholo-
gist Carol Gilligan argued in A
Different Voice, are comfortable being at
the center of things rather than at the
top, and making moral judgments on a
contextual rather than abstract basis.
Such attitudes undermine fhe pre-
sumptions and disciplines by which
hierarchies have been maintained

Diversity is the of fhe day. In
every organization, people of diver-
gent backgrounds are working side-by-
side. This is the result of greater
movement across b s; direct immi-
gration to non-gafeway cities; the
assimilation of African-Americans into
the mainstream of American life; and
fhe fact thaf members of subcultures
no longer necessarily find value in sub-
merging efhnic, nafional and religious
identify in to adjust to notions of
a fasf-fragmenting “mainstream/’

Thus leaders must show nimbleness
and sensitivity to cultural difference to
balance the needs of their diverse con-
stifuency. They must also see that diver-
sity is not simply openness to race or
gender, buf to different values as well.

Power and Influence
The economic, technological and

demographic changes work together,
resulting in a rapidly shifting landscape
in which the power and influence of
those in the ranks becomes integral fo
how organizations function. This turns
traditional notions of leadership upside
down. For if people in the ranks are
empowered, if their knowledge consti-
tutes a primary value, if they can com-
municate directly, and if they prize
diversity, they will not be led by my-
way-or-fhe-highway autocrats.

To the extent that leadership is equat-
ed with and derived from posifion, if
will be less potent. New concepts of
leadership will be vesfed less in posi-
tion than in the power of connections,
relationships, individual expertise, per-
sonal qualities, aspirations, and earned
personal authority. Leaders need to
make the mental shift away from tradi-
tional models and sources of pwwer and
exercise flexibility and sensitivity to
meef the challenge of the new model, LE

Sally Helgesen is a leadership devetopmeni consultant and
coadi. Visit wtmo.satlylielgesen.cam or call 51S-392-1998.

ACTION: Tap into new sources of power.

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